Intel shows off fanless Broadwell tablet, thinner than the iPad Air

Also formally launches overclocker-friendly Haswell CPUs, which can hit 5GHz.

Enlarge / Intel has changed the packaging of its Haswell CPUs to help them hit higher speeds.

Intel

While Intel's Broadwell CPUs are still several months from retail availability, the company took to the stage at this year's Computex show in Taipei to show off the new architecture and make a handful of other announcements. As reported by Engadget, Intel has announced a new "Core M" line of Broadwell processors designed specifically for thin-and-light tablets and convertibles. The Core M reference design Intel showed off was fanless and 7.2mm thick, which the company was quick to compare to the 7.5mm iPad Air—not bad for a tablet that will use Intel's flagship architecture instead of a slower Atom chip.

It should be noted that the new Core M isn't an entirely new type of processor. Intel tells us it's the branding the company will use for ultra-low voltage "Y-series" Broadwell CPUs. Y-series chips based on the Ivy Bridge architecture were first introduced back in 2012 and were made to slot in underneath the U-series chips found in most Ultrabooks.

Intel

Intel

Intel

Intel

Intel

As it announced previously, Intel is also making some changes to Haswell to benefit overclockers. Improving the packaging of the CPU will apparently allow overclocked CPUs to hit clock speeds of as much as 5GHz on air cooling, countering claims by enthusiasts that Intel's overclockability has gone down as the chips' instructions-per-clock have increased. The chip that can hit that speed is the new $339 i7-4790K, a quad-core CPU with a base clock speed of 4.0GHz and a Turbo Boost clock speed of 4.4GHz. There's also a $242 3.5GHz (3.9GHz Turbo) Core i5-4690K that has a little less cache and lacks Hyperthreading but should benefit from the new overclocker-friendly packaging.

For true cheapskates, there's always the unlocked 3.2GHz Pentium G3258 "Anniversary Edition," which only has two cores and no Turbo Boost but costs $72. The worst thing about it is that its memory speeds are limited to 1333MHz DDR3 rather than the faster 1600MHz memory used by other Pentium and Core CPUs, which may limit your performance for tasks that need a lot of memory bandwidth. It could still be a solid value for a budget gaming box, though.

The new desktop CPUs are all slated to ship this month. The Pentium CPU should work in all 8-series and 9-series motherboards as long as the manufacturer has released a compatible BIOS update, and AnandTech reports that the new Core i5 and i7 chips should work in all 9-series boards and some 8-series boards "if and only if the motherboard manufacturer has engineered the motherboard to cope with the increased power consumption." As Intel CEO Brian Krzanich said last month, Broadwell will begin showing up before the December holidays, but no sooner than September.

Andrew Cunningham / Andrew has a B.A. in Classics from Kenyon College and has over five years of experience in IT. His work has appeared on Charge Shot!!! and AnandTech, and he records a weekly book podcast called Overdue.